Soma: Thanks For All You've Done!

In case you don’t know, S. Somasegar (“Soma”) is a Corporate Vice President at Microsoft over the developer division. He’s been over Visual Studio and the developer tools for just short of forever, and he has been at Microsoft for 27 years in total. After almost three decades, it is sad to see him leaving Microsoft. Soma influence has impacted the coverage here on Codeguru and has impacted what every developer in the Microsoft and .NET space does.

I’ve met Soma in person a number of times. The first time I met him was at night on a dark roof of a hotel in some southern city. It wasn’t a clandestine operation, but rather a gathering in the evening of a conference. At this gathering, Soma asked what I thought of the conference. In typical fashion, I remember making a few frank comments about the developer tools and the direction Microsoft was going. I don’t recall the specifics, but if you know me, you’ll know I tend to be frank with my comments. He told me he had some involvement with Visual Studio and was interested in hearing what I thought. He listened intently. I don’t recall the details as this was over a decade ago, but I remember he made a great impression and took what I said seriously. At the time, which was a long, long time ago, it didn’t click with me just how involved he was!

Of course, one of my most memorable Microsoft moments of Soma was when I dropped him an email in 2007. I simply asked if he had any comment about the release of Visual Studio 2008 that I could share with the User Group I was leading here in the Indianapolis area. We were doing an InstallFest with Visual Studio 2008 at our next meeting, and I thought a quote from Soma would be a nice touch. Soma didn’t provide me a written quote. However, what is very telling about Soma is the fact that he didn’t ignore the request. Instead, he took time to create a video message to the group. It was “above and beyond” what most people at his level would have done. It was an amazing gesture to show just how much he cared about the developer community.

In fact, from my perspective, “above and beyond” was what Soma has done when it come to developers. For all he has done for the developer community, I personally and publicly thank him. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for him! I know we at Codeguru wish him the best!

Brad! Jones

Here’s the video he created for my group in 2007. We played this at our December meeting that year: